Saturday, July 2, 2016

Buhari: Before This Hope Turns Into Hopelessness

ByMartin-Hassan E. Eze

At a time like this that
Nigerians are hungry and angry, saying ‘I am sorry’ may be the best escape
route that some of us who championed the sai Buhari crusade and were his ardent
supporters in his ANPP and CPC days in the political wilderness of failed
political ambition can offer to Nigerians who wish to drag us into the shooting
range or send us to Golgotha after the magical wand of the Daura sheriff had
failed to perform the needed magic after one year in office.

*Tinubu and Buhari

Wallahi, I actually believed
the APC and Buhari will herald a paradigm shift from the messy stories of the
past. I was also convinced that before a year in office, the APC led FG could
have proven to majority of my Ibo brothers who seem not to approve of Buhari and the other 12 million Nigerians that rejected
him at the last presidential polls that he was a better candidate than GEJ- the
incompetent shoeless fisher man from Otuoke and the ‘boo’ of Biafrans. But,
some of us are beginning to lose our voices in shame if not regret.

These days I don't worship at my Cathedral where
I am a popular face and even sneak in and out of some streets like Nicodemus
to avoid confronting citizens who will insist I explain why Buhari has denied
every single phantom promise he made during the campaigns or have done exactly the
opposite of what he said he will do as if I share the same sitting room with
the old man. Biko kwa, I don't know Aso villa and I am not in any way related to
Lai Mohammed the megaphone of APC and the FG.

My greatest disappointment with the APC and
her greatest undoing is(was) her inability to properly manage her success and
adorn the party with a nationalist babariga bearing in mind the ethnic and
religious division that greeted the election. I was expecting to see Buhari at
the Saint Theresa’s Cathedral in Nsukka sharing smiles and handshake with Most
Rt Prof Godfrey Onah, the Catholic Bishop of Nsukka or drinking Sapele water
with our Ijaw and Urobo brothers in Effurun. The APC and PMB lost the game the
moment they failed to realise that after election, partisanship and party
politics is sent to the morgue as governance and nation-building take the
centre stage. I actually wept when the President started exhibiting the same
sectional mentality that robbed him of a nation-wide support that Abiola
enjoyed in 1993 in
his political appointments. I was expecting a system of appointment that will
be so wazobian in nature that all haters and bigots currently dominating and
polluting the social space will be relieved of their jobs but the old man just disappointed me. The winner take all school of thought was not what a New Nigeria
we were expecting from Buhari needed judging from the religious, ethnic and
regional tension the last Presidential election generated. Extending an olive
branch to some sections of the country that don’t love his face was a political
master stroke and common sense that could have scored some goals for national
unity and integration but Buhari and his handlers have so far proven that
sense is not common as some of us think.

Sincerely speaking, it is a truism that under
PDP-led FG for the past sixteen years the nation was heading to Somalia as the
socio-economic landscape of the nation was submerged in darkness and was decaying
irredeemably in a frightening downward trend. The art of looting was elevated
to a culture by the political class and PDP buccaneers some of whom are
Buhari’s friends today. And, the consequence was that despite the seemingly
enormous human and natural resources, true national development and prosperity
for most citizens remained an elusive trophy.

Nigerians were in deep pit of poverty and
wanted a way out. The APC propaganda megaphone came calling and what do you
expect? The APC and Buhari like a young man desperate to win a heart of a lady
promised a lot and now that the chickens have come home to roost, they are
realising the implication of phantom promises in a country like Nigeria where
decades of misgovernance and looting have left the nation in a state of decay.
This ‘changi’ intoxicated politicians forgot that propaganda may help you win an election but propaganda will not sustain you if you fail to provide solutions
to the teething ‘wahalas’ confronting the citizens.

It may sound sweet to the ears of Lai Mohammed
to blame PDP and accuse GEJ for all the mess in this country but that was not
why and what over 15 million Nigerians elected PMB to do. The poor man in
Ajegunle who is sleeping with one eye open due to insecurity, the young
graduate wandering in the streets of Abuja in search of job, the woman who has
just lost her only son because our hospitals are glorified mortuaries, the man
who lost his family in a fatal accident because our roads are deathtraps, the
students who live like pigs in our universities due to decayed infrastructure
and the young woman brutalised and abused by security forces are expecting a
better deal from Buhari and not rhetorics. With the way the blame game is going
and the manner the APC and Aso Rock have found comfort in dishing out the menu
of falsehood and pointing accusing fingers at GEJ and PDP, we will soon wake up
to hear that Lai Mohammed is unable to get a 13 years old bride like Senator
Yerima due to the failures of the defunct GEJ and PDP government. If this is what
the APC have for Nigerians , then, the services of “I Go Die’’ and ‘Basket Mouth’ are seriously needed because they are better comedians when compared to
the arrogant Femi Adeshina.

Had the APC and PMB listened to the series of
articles , interviews and public lectures of Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah of
Sokoto Catholic Diocese the anti- corruption crusade which is the only stock in
APC’s store will not be weeping at the alter of selective justice. Shehu Garba,
Femi Adesina and Lai Mohammed will not be suffering from political high blood
pressure due to the stress associated with manufacturing lies and half-truths to explain away why the government seem to be paralysed even after one year in office.
Like Bishop Kukah observed, the anti-corruption propaganda has been employed
by past governments yet at the tail end, there was always nothing to write home
about them. When anti-corruption crusade is designed to gain cheap popularity
and settle old political scores while actionable blue print for socio-economic
and infrastructural development is relegated to the background, the government
is shooting herself on the foot because after all said and done ,nobody will
be given a medal for sending political enemies to jail at the expense of good
governance and dividends of democracy.

Bishop Kukah was actually right in his
postulations. One stone can be used to kill two birds. The government can
strenthen the anti-graft agencies and allow them to do their work giving her
time to primarily pay undivided attention to the need of Nigerians that was not
in the scale of preference of the ruinous and kleptomaniac PDP-led FG for the
past sixteen years. APC ignored the eminent Bishop to her peril. The most
regrettable episode of the whole drama is that Muslim-northerners who see APC is
an Islamic enclave and Hausa-Fulani sanctuary threw all sort of dirty cannons at
the distinguished Catholic Bishop of Sokoto; a patriot and active citizen that
no any Northerner Malam born of a woman can withstand intellectually. Today, APC
is in a feacial mess and she is battling to ensure that the wailing wailers
don’t pull the rug off her feet just after one year in office.

It is instructive and salient I state that the
hope that greeted the victory of PMB is fast turning into hopelessness. Most
Nigerians and especially Arewas who had thought that they will be picking up
dollars in the streets of Sokoto, Kano,
Zamfara, Kebbi and Kastina after every Friday prayer are also increasingly
becoming disappointed with the direction of the government.

Well, Nigerians are fed up with the worthless
rhetorics of governmnet megaphones which are most often than not
illogical,unintelligent, unreasonable and insulting. Here, I most confess that
I miss the cerebral Olusegun Adeniyi and the legendary Reuben Abati. While the
cap fits the veteran Shehu Garba, the seemingly overfed little bird from the
Sun newspaper has grown wings and is arrogantly vomiting rubbish like Doyen
Okupe for Nigerian to swallow.

The APC must stop telling Nigerians ‘story for
the gods’. It is time to walk the talk because the last time I checked, angry,
hungry and hopeless citizens are already dusting their voters' cards. I , for
one, now move around with mine in case Allah reads the minds of patriotic
Nigerians( not these Biafran renegades and ND lunatics )and decides to fast
forward 2019. Is Buhari hearing me?

*Martin-Hassan
Eze, aWriter/Author/ Freelance Journalist/
Independent political Analyst wrote in from KontagoraNigerState
(07086770315)